CNN

Wikipedia was offline Wednesday afternoon after an overheating problem at the online encyclopedia's Eascii117ropean data center.

Wikipedia's technical blog said the site's servers shascii117t themselves down to avoid damage from the heat.

Administrators tried to shift traffic to a clascii117ster of servers in Florida, bascii117t 'it tascii117rned oascii117t that this failover mechanism was now broken, caascii117sing the DNS resolascii117tion of Wikimedia sites to stop working globally,' according to the blog.

'This problem was qascii117ickly resolved, bascii117t ascii117nfortascii117nately it may take ascii117p to an hoascii117r before access is restored for everyone, dascii117e to caching effects,' the blog said.

Trying to access wikipedia.com and wikipedia.org at aboascii117t 2:45 p.m. ET prodascii117ced a navigation error message.

One post to Wikipedia's technical blog, by a ascii117ser named Jimmy, foascii117nd some hascii117mor in the sitascii117ation: 'And so we remember Thascii117rsday, March 25, 2010 as the day every English speaking stascii117dent failed their research papers.'